


All The Years Between Us

by Elsey



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Holocaust, M/M, holocaust AU, like out of my comfort zone dark, this shit is gonna be dark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-19 02:40:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9414371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsey/pseuds/Elsey
Summary: A young man.An old man.A world between them, and a story to be told.





	1. Memorial

On May 12th, 2005, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe opened.

A young boy attends the opening with his mother and his grandparents, who are both Holocaust survivors. They solemnly walk through the structure, and when they leave, the boy sees an old man, by himself, eyes closed, leaning against one of the tall walls, face raised towards the sun.

The boy tugs on his mother’s sleeve, gesturing to the old man. His grandfather looks at the man before he puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder and leads him out, his mother and grandmother following.

Ten years later, when the young boy is nineteen, he returns to the memorial with his camera, hoping to capture the sense of emotion that he didn’t feel, couldn’t feel, when he was a boy. His grandparents died within a month of each other the previous year and he felt empty for the longest time. Now he knows what he needs to do to fill that feeling. He needs to remember them and to try to understand what they went through.

The memorial is his first stop. Auschwitz next, the museums in Berlin, who knows where else. He’s taking a year off school and his family is supportive. He has everything ahead of him.

He steps into the memorial.

He gets more pictures than expected and after half an hour he leaves. He stops halfway through the memorial, turning to the left.

There’s an old man sitting cross-legged on the ground, back against the tall memorial block. He has a book in his lap, glasses perched on the end of his nose. The book is in English. The young man approaches, crouching down beside him.

“What is that you’re reading?” the young man asks. The old man looks at the cover and then back to the young man. He smiles.

“It is an old American Western book, I doubt that you have read it.” The young man smiles back. He waves his camera in his hand.

“Do you mind if I take a picture of you reading?” the young man asks.

“Not at all,” the old man responds. “Is this for a school assignment?”

“Something like that,” the young man responds. He steps back, the old man starting to read again. He snaps three photos from three different angles before he moves closer and gets his last one. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem at all,” the old man tells him. The young man turns to leave, but stops. He crouches down once more.

“Can I ask why you are reading here?” the young man asks.

“What is your name?” the old man asks. The young man seems taken aback.

“My name? My name is Lukas,” the young man tells him.

“Lukas?” the old man says, letting the end trail off.

“Lukas Baumann,” he tells him. The old man nods.

“A good name,” he tells him, looking up with a smile. Lukas can’t help but smile back. “Why do you want to know about me, Lukas Baumann?”

“I… I don’t know. You seem very familiar to me.” The old man smiles again. He closes his eyes and he tips his head up to the sky. Lukas tilts his head, his brow furrowing. “You are- you are the man that I saw here ten years ago, aren’t you?” The old man tips his head back down, looking at him with soft eyes.

“I have only seen a boy with such green eyes once before. I never forgot him, and I imagined I would never forget you.”

“But… your eyes were closed, you were look away…”

“That was when you saw me, Lukas Baumann. I saw your eyes when you passed, and I looked to the sky and smiled, thanking whoever may be there for allowing me to see them one last time.”

“One last time? I don’t understand.” Lukas sits on the ground across from the man, legs crosses beneath him, camera gently placed on the ground beside him.

“You wanted to know why I read here, yes?”

“Yes, I would like to know.”

“How much time do you have, Lukas Baumann?” Lukas tilts his own head to the sky before looking back at the old man.

“I have all the time in the world.” The old man smiles.

“Good. The story of why I am sitting here in this memorial starts a long, long time ago, with two boys, younger than you are now, an unfortunate time, and a religion.”

“You- you are a holocaust survivor.”

“Yes, I am.”

“I am sorry, I shouldn’t have interrupted you-” Lukas moves to stand, hand on his camera. The old man reaches out an arm, grapping him by the wrist.

“You have interrupted nothing. I come here every day. Every day I read a book. Every day I see tourists pass, I see guided tours. I have come here six days a week for ten years. You are not interrupting me. If you would like to go, go. But if you would like to stay, I am willing to speak. I have never told this story. I never intended to. But if you are willing to listen, I am willing to speak.”

Lukas sits back down.

“Why have you never told your story?” he asks the old man. “So many survivors tell theirs and it helps them, it helps humanity-”

“My story was not welcome after the war. My story was not welcome for decades after. Perhaps today it would be, but there is no difference to be made today. However, I would like one person to hear it before I die.”

“I’m not sure I am that person,” Lukas says slowly.

“Who else? I have been here, in this spot, with a new book, for ten years. You are the first person to speak to me, Lukas Baumann.” Lukas bites his lip, looking away before nodding.

“Okay,” he says. “Tell me your story.”

“I was born in the winter of 1924. I had three older brothers, and within the coming years I would have a younger sister. We were never keen celebrators of our faith. We did not even rest on the Sabbath, there was simply no time. With five children, my father was always working, my mother even picking up a job soon after, my two oldest brothers working and the last brother watching my siblings and I. My mother was a Christian and my father a Jew, which is why we were so poor even before I was born. Their parents gave no support and no consent.

“By the time the second world war started, I was the one who was old enough to stay at home with my sister while everyone else worked. My two oldest brothers had left, which left just three people able to be employed. Every day my sister and I would walk to school, walk home, do work, prepare the meals, keep the house clean… It was a good life. He was my neighbour. A wonderful boy, a wonderful man…” he trails off, looking up at the young boy, at Lukas.

“Do you have anyone in your life?”

“What do you mean?” Lukas asks.

“Someone… someone who you feel you cannot live without? Who is too important?”

“Uh. No. But I think I know what you mean. That’s… that’s how my grandfather looked at my grandmother. He died a few months after she did. They were always together,” he says, smiling fondly.

“That is how I felt about him. He was everything. He was all I ever wanted, ever needed. But in Nazi Germany, nobody is that stupid.” Lukas lowers his head. “Life now… it seems so unfair. Your generation can walk down the street hand-in-hand with whoever you please, you can love whoever you please… I apologize. I’m just an old man with an ear willing to listen.”

“What is your name?” Lukas asks. The old man blinks, looking up from the ground.

“My name?”

“Yeah, your name, what is it?”

“Castiel.”

Lukas jerks back. “Castiel? What kind of name is Castiel?”

“Apparently a Christian name,” the old man chuckles.

“I have two more questions for you before you tell me your story.”

“Ask away,” Castiel says.

“The boy that you loved. What was his name?”

“His name,” Castiel says quietly, hands clasped in his lap, “was Dean.”

“What happened to him?” Lukas asks. Castiel looks up, a tight smile on his face before it falls away.

“He died.”


	2. The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “‘I will spit on my mother’s grave before I raise my hand in respect to a monster,’ he once said in response to the teacher demanding, as he did every day, to know why Dean did not salute. He was given ten lashes and sent to the principal’s office. He did not return to school for three days.

“I think that I will start by telling you about Dean. His name was Dean Winchester and he was born in January of 1924, just a week or so before myself. He had a younger brother named Sam. Dean often joked that he and his brother were named after their grandparents to try and appease them about the marriage.

“His parents played an important part in his life, though they themselves were physically absent. It is a lovely story, how they came to meet. His father was John Winchester, an American, and his mother Mary Campbell, a German with English roots. Her family, despite the first world war, found itself doing well in the spring of 1922 and her father took them with him on a business trip to New York. Mary was sixteen, John nineteen.

“John, a country boy from Kansas, went to New York to try and make in the world. Dean never did know what John wanted to accomplish in such a city, and his father never told him.

“John was walking down the street to his job at a pub when he ran into Mary Winchester out with her mother for a stroll. Well, rather, John was _running_ down the street and hit Mary on his way by, as he was late for work. She stumbled and he caught her before she could fall. Dean always said that his father would describe it as true love.

“Of course her parents didn’t approve- the boy wasn’t Jewish and he was an American of all people. An American bartender at that. John and Mary didn’t care. They found ways to meet, in parks, on benches, late at night with stolen kisses outside of John’s pub.

“In August it was time for Mary to return to Germany. John followed. He found the ship she was taking and he worked his way to Germany. Somehow he found her there, and after many struggles, he learned the language and he got a job at a bar. He proved himself to Mary’s parents, working hard and getting a room above the bar.

“The day came when John would ask Mary’s father for permission to marry her. He even said that he would convert to Judaism. Mr. Campbell told him that if he converted, he could marry his daughter.

“They married three months later. Dean was born the following January.

“John got them a house and he provided for them, often working three different jobs at once while Mary cared for Dean in their small house. Four years after Dean came in his brother Sam, and six months after Sam came what would eventually bring Dean to me.

“A fire started in the small Winchester home in November of 1928. John was not home, he was at a night shift. Mary covered Dean’s mouth with a rag, rushing him outside. She ran into Sam’s room to get him out. Dean says he doesn’t remember much, just hearing a crash as he was running out. He went back inside and there was fire everywhere. He picked Sam up from the floor. He said that he could not even see his mother through the flames.

“His father never recovered from the loss. Mary was his world, and the children were hers. He did not want to give them up because he could see her in them. He took the children and tried to get them back to America. He could work his way across with no passport, but there was no way he could get the boys there.

“Dean and Sam were dropped off on their grandparent’s doorstep in May of 1929. Dean was five, and Sam had just celebrated his first birthday in a rundown German apartment that John could barely afford.

“Their grandparents welcomed them with open arms and they never saw John again. His grandparents refused to speak of his mother, and so Dean went to his grandparents' room and found a box in the closet when he was eight years old. He brought it to my house to read it away from his grandparents. I remember comforting him as he cried over the pages of his mother’s diary from when she first met John.

“As you have learned in history class, the stock market crashed in October of 1929, which was a turning point for all Germans. The Campbells lost massive stocks in their company, causing a complete crash of the business. They were barely scraping by and sold their large home for pennies on the dollar.

“They moved into a two-bedroom home one block away from my own in March of 1930.

“That is when I met Dean Winchester.

“My brothers and I were walking to school when we found a young boy who looked lost and confused. We asked where he was going and he told us the name of our own school. With no further questions, I took his hand, my other in my brother Gabriel’s, and we walked to school.

“Dean walked home with us and I received permission from my brother Gabriel to walk him all the way to his house, one block away. Dean informed me that his grandparents were both at work, his grandfather in a shop and his grandmother as a nanny for the daughter of a woman who used to be her friend. Of course a five year old child cannot express these words exactly, but I am adding in what information gaps were later filled for myself.

“I went inside of his house with him and we played there. I walked home soon after, knowing that I would be in trouble for not going home to do my chores as mother would want.

“Over the next years we would become the best of friends. Walking to school with our younger siblings- Sam four years younger than us and my sister Anna three.

“As Nazi power rose in Germany, Dean and I grew up very fast. At age nine Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Many people, even German people, seem to think that the persecution of Jews began in the late 1930s, but it did not. It began the moment that the National Socialists took over, slowly at first, but with gaining speed.

“We were afraid to walk to school because we lived in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood. All of our classmates knew of our lineage. Dean had what his grandmother would call his father’s spirit. He always fought for what he wanted, no matter what it was, and no matter what the cost. He got into little spats here and there at first, telling off someone who would call us untermenschen, throw rocks at us, shove us. Dean would yell back, throw back, shove back. No one got into any trouble, it was kept under wraps.

“Until Sam got hurt.

“I remember the day very clearly. It was a very hot June day in 1933. School was nearly out, we only had a few more days before we could get away, get to the safety of our community.

“A large boy who was the child of known Jew-haters came up to Sam, who was playing in the grass a few metres from those of us who had been ostracized for our faith, and he kicked him in the chest, shoving him down.

“‘Say it!’ he yelled. This is what brought our attention to the incident. The boy pressed his weight further onto Sam’s chest. ‘Say it! Say what you are! Say you are Judenscheisse! Say that your filthy whore of a mother deserved her death!’

“Sam began to scream no and struggle, and the boy’s boot moved from his chest, slamming down on his face. I can remember hearing the blood pumping in my ears and my heavy breath as we sprinted towards Sam, Dean taking the lead and tackling the other boy to the ground while I dropped to Sam’s side. His face was covered in blood and he was screaming as it poured from his mouth. I didn’t know what to do, how to help, I just hugged him as I would Anna when she had nightmares of the fires she had seen lit down the street, badly burning our neighbours and friends.

“I didn’t think of what Dean was doing until I saw it- that tiny nine-year-old boy was the image of pure rage. His fists pounded into the larger boy’s face again and again and again. I could hear the crack of bones, I could hear the cry of other students, the teachers shouting as they realized what was happening and ran over. Our own friends tried to pull Dean off the boy to no avail. I can still hear his shouts as he brought his fist down, the sheer fury in his voice.

“By the time the teachers pulled Dean off him he was worse off than Sam. He had a broken nose, a fracture in his cheek, and he lost four teeth.

“This was before Jews were banned from teaching and the principal of the school was a Jew himself. It was through the grace of God that Dean wasn’t expelled at the age of nine. He was sent home for the remainder of the year and allowed to return in September.

“Dean returned to school in September, but the principal did not.

“School was a hazard. We would have to be careful when leaving, for the Christian boys would wait for us at the gates and grab us, throwing our bags and swarming us. Even Dean couldn’t help then. Two of them would hold little Anna back while kicking Dean, Sam, and I until we couldn’t do much more than moan. I remember my ribs hurting for years. I am surprised the damage was not worse.

“One morning in January of 1934 our teacher came into class, proceeding to salute Hitler and encouraging the rest of us to do the same. The Jews in the class kept their hands down and were taken to the front of the room, being whacked three times on the hand by a ruler. This happened every day until we eventually complied, our hands sore.

“The only who to never heil was ten-year-old Dean Winchester.

“‘I will spit on my mother’s grave before I raise my hand in respect to a monster,’ he once said in response to the teacher demanding, as he did every day, to know why Dean did not salute. He was given ten lashes and sent to the principal’s office. He did not return to school for three days.

“Seemingly nothing could crush Dean’s spirit. He hated Hitler and he hated him with a burning passion. He wanted to join a resistance and one cold Saturday in February of 1934 he would come running to my house with pencils and paper, telling me we needed to make signs to inform the people of what he was really doing, that Jews aren’t bad people and that Hitler needed to be stopped.

“‘Where will you get the information?’ I asked.

“‘Grandfather Samuel comes home and speaks with grandmother at night. He thinks that I can’t hear them, but if I put my ear against the wall I can get most of what they’re saying. Come on, Cas-’ Dean often called me this as his friend, ‘-we can stop this, we can be part of what stops this!’

“‘Dean,’ I whispered, checking behind myself that my family was not in hearing distance of his antics, ‘this could get us arrested!’

“‘Do you want to live like this forever, Cas?’ he asked me. At age nine I could not comprehend the words that I was saying that now, in my old age, hold so much meaning.

“‘No, but I want to live, Dean,’ I told him, my eyes pleading along with my words that he would not do this thing, that he would not commit this crime and leave me. It is strange to think that I so feared for the arrest of my friend, a ten-year-old boy. In what strange world is a ten-year-old boy at risk of jail or worse for a piece of paper and an idea? But that was the world we lived in, and so I shooed my best friend from my house. While he walked away he turned back with one more pleading glance. I looked away, and I found myself to be at the end of the hateful look I had seen directed at so many teachers and students.

“I never wanted to be on the receiving end of that look again, so I yelled to my parents that I had an errand to run, stuffed my feet into my boots, and followed him into the snow without a coat, running to catch up to him.

“I spent the remainder of that Saturday in Dean’s room with him while Sam was out to play with a friend and his grandparents worked. We came up with slogans and crudely drawn pictures and half thought out ideas about why Jews were the good guys, why the Reich needed to be stopped before it truly began.

“Four days later Dean’s grandfather found us on the floor scrambling to hide the papers when he came home from work early. He began screaming at Dean, tearing papers. Dean stood, defiant.

“‘Just because you are a coward doesn’t mean I’m willing to be one!’ The sound of the slap rang in my ears. The room grew very quiet.

“‘Castiel, it is time for you to go home,’ Samuel told me. I nodded meekly, gathering the pencils that I had contributed to Dean’s cause and scurrying from the room, throwing on my snow clothes and rushing past Sam before he could question what happened.

“Dean never did tell me what his grandfather said to him after that, but the talk of a resistance stopped. However, there was nothing that Samuel could do or say that would make Dean heil in class. Day after day he received smack after smack until one hit too hard, sending blood to the floor and Dean to the nurse’s office. But the next day, Dean would not heil, and he received another hit over the bandages on his hand.

Castiel raises his arm and looks at his watch. Lukas’ eyes slowly blink, seeming to be coming out of a trance.

“It appears that in my old age I have forgotten how quickly time can fly, even when I now speak so slowly.” The sun has started to fall in the sky. “The memorial will be closed in forty minutes and I like to leave before so that I am not a disturbance here.” Castiel begins to stand.

“But wait, what happens next? You’ve barely even begun to tell anything! It’s only 1934!” Lukas protests. Castiel smiles.

“I will be here tomorrow to continue my story, Lukas Baumann.”

He begins to walk away from where Lukas is now standing himself.

“And the next day, and the next day, and the day after that.”


	3. Sketches

The next morning Lukas is waiting at the spot that he met Castiel the minute that the monument opens. An hour goes by. And another.

Lukas begins to shift on the concrete floor, wondering if this strange old man was going to show or if this was all just some huge joke someone was playing on him. Soon he begins to wonder if he should pack up his things and go home.

Just at the thought crosses his mind, he sees Castiel shuffle around the corner, a surprised look on his face.

“Lukas Baumann?” he asks. Lukas nods. Castiel chuckles. “What a surprise. I was not expecting you to return.”

“And why is that?” Lukas asks, shifting as Castiel takes a seat across from him.

“I figured a young man like you would have a million better things to do than to listen to my droning on.” Lukas smiles at him.

“I have nothing I would rather be doing with my time.”

“Well, I suppose I won’t be needing this, then,” Castiel says, and places the book in his hands beside him. Lukas looks at the cover, noticing that it is not the same book from yesterday.

“A new book?” Lukas asks.

“Hm?” Castiel responds. Lukas gestures at the book and the older man smiles. “Ah, yes, my books. Throughout my life, I collected a most impressive library. It has only grown since I’ve been coming to this place and I soon ran out of books. I now go to the library every day and donate one of my books while taking out one of theirs to read for the day, returning it the next morning. It has been five years like this and my collection is quickly dwindling. I have read more books in my life than I ever imagined I would.”

“That’s- thousands of books!”

“Yes, indeed, if not tens of thousands at this point.” Lukas blinks back his shock. “Now, are you ready to continue?” Lukas nods his consent.

“Where did I leave off? Ah yes, Dean’s fighting. After his talk with Samuel he stopped his ideas of resistance, but he never truly stopped resisting. Eventually they stopped suspending him over the minor issues that would get other children sent home, but one day it was more than they could allow with the fights he was getting into. He was warned that he would soon he expelled from the school district if he kept up with these fights.

“That they were saying this to him still angers me today. All that Dean did in that time was protect himself, protect Sam, protect me- there would be name calling and rocks thrown and spit on our shoes. The only person to stand up for us was Dean. It should have been the teachers, the parents, but they all stood idly by. Of course our parents wanted to get involved, but being Jews they knew that there was no hope for anyone to be listening, and that it would just stir up trouble. And so Jewish parents would comfort their children when they arrived home bruised and bloodied, they would pull them close and wish it all away, tell them that things were going to get better soon. And sometimes we believed their words. But from experience, it only got worse after that.

“Soon the teacher began to heil two, three, four times a day, and every time Dean would refuse. At the end of that schoolyear, Dean’s grandparents were informed that he would not be welcome at the school come the following September. The Campbells took the news with grace, but at home the tensions were high. On one hand, they wished to reprimand Dean, to tell him that he was wrong and that he should do what makes it easiest for everyone. But on the other hand, what kind of people would that make them? Telling their grandson to accept a tyrant who hated them with open arms and stop the small resistance that he had. And so they did not yell at Dean, did not reprimand him. Instead they told him to try and find a job that he could do to bring in money until they could find him another school district that would accept him.

“‘We did it, Cas! We really showed them!’ he said to me on the day that he received the news. His eyes were lit with excitement and he couldn’t keep the grin off his face. I smiled nervously with him, but on the inside I could feel something else coming, something worse.

“It was a few weeks later that the newspapers started to release information about Jews murdering Christian children. There were several children missing at the time, children that had been for some time, as was common in such a large city. But these Nazi newspapers claimed that any and all child abductions and murders led back to Jews.

“It was an absurd thing to claim. How could the Jewish population be responsible for the death of these children, especially when there were now so many eyes on Jews every time we left the house? Of course the badge that Jews were forced to sew on wasn’t introduced until 1939, and was not truly enforced until the early 1940s, but if you had a slightly larger nose, curly hair, or a ‘Jew-face’, whatever that meant, then you were at risk of being followed, spied on, and abused in public.

“My father was absolutely livid at such accusations. He was a kind, caring man and he loved all his children. When we were young he would often offer candy to other children on the street on his way to work, tipping his hat in hello and trying to bring some sort of kindness to this world.

“But after these articles came out, the hat-tipping stopped. The candy stopped. The kindness stopped. God forbid he give the candy to a little Christian boy, or he tip his hat at a good Christian girl. Who knew what could happen? Would he be attacked, would we, his family, be hurt? And so my father’s contribution of kindness to the world was taken away. He lost part of himself the day that he gave that last piece of candy to a little girl and saw two women whispering to one another across the street while a man holding a newspaper raised an eyebrow, following my father down the street, presumably to make sure that he did not follow the girl and take her.

“Times of war call for precautions, but this was not yet a time of war. This was a time of fear and of creating the fear that would lead to the war. It was a time in my life I wish I did not remember with such clarity.

“Dean got a job taking care of the gardens of the rich people a few blocks over. He never did have that traditional ‘Jewish look’. Straight blond hair, green eyes, freckles, pale skin- he looked more ‘Aryan’ than half of the boys that boasted to be so on the playground. He would get a few pennies for his work and use them to buy Sam sweets or to give to his grandparents for groceries. That summer he and Sam worked as much as they could while I stayed at home with Anna, Gabriel going out and doing the dirty work that would one day be my job.

“Even though we had all the time in the world, Dean and I rarely saw each other in the summer of 1934. Tensions were rising in the city and children were rushed inside as soon as it got dark. Dean was usually busy with Sam and I was usually busy with chores for my mother. Neither of us seemed to have the time to speak to the other.

“I do not like speaking of that schoolyear. I don’t enjoy thinking about it either. Without Dean, all hell rained loose upon us. Sam and I would meet Dean at the back gate every day after school, Anna in tow, but it never helped to have Dean there. We would be beaten to a pulp and sent on our way. It went on like that all year.

“As Nazi power rose, my neighbours became more and more cautious, keeping children inside and not having friends in their homes for fear of what some Christian might think they could be planning, two Jewish families in a living room.

“The summer of 1935 was much like the previous summer. We had little enjoyment and while there was no job available for me, I had to keep the house in pristine conditions so that my parents could have some peace. Anna had her own garden in the back. I would often see Sam Winchester back there with her, but no sign of his brother.

“In September of 1935 the Nuremburg laws were passed. I was no longer a German citizen. Nobody that I knew was a German citizen. We had no healthcare. My cousins could not marry because she was a Jew and he was a Christian. He was later enrolled into the army and died in battle. She died without marrying, claiming her whole life that he was different, and that he didn’t want to go. That is a different kind of love story, though.

“In November of 1935 I fell ill. Very ill. I cannot remember the exact name of the disease, but it was an influenza of some kind. My parents could not afford to take me to the doctor. All the Jewish doctors had been fired and my mother did not have any doctor friends. The only Christian doctor that we could make it to demanded money up front. We had no money. And my parents could not take time off of work to care for me if they wanted to try and desperately make the money that they needed to save me.

“Dean cared for me every day.

“When my mother left, he walked in. He fed me soup, gave me what medicine he had that might help, put cold compresses on my head and gave me a bucket to vomit into.

“‘When you’re all better we’ll go see a show, Cas,’ he’d say to me.

“‘What kind of show?’ I would ask him.

“‘The kind for the Aryans,’ he would joke, and I would laugh until I coughed. It was never funny, and I don’t know why I laughed every time he told the joke. Perhaps because I was delusional, perhaps because I just wanted him to feel better. I really can’t say.

“When my throat began to close over my parents foot the bill. I was given a needle at the doctor’s office and sent home with antibiotics. I was better in two weeks and apologized to my parent for what felt like forever.

“‘Castiel, you cannot apologize for being ill. This wasn’t your fault. We’re just glad you’re okay,’ they would tell me over and over again. But it never made me feel better, never helped to ease my conscience.

“After I was better, Dean was always by my side. He started to learn his schooling again through me. He would read what I was doing for homework and we would help each other. He would read through my notes and look at the lesson plan. I think that he was bored, and I think that he was avoiding me for so long because I would think him boring. He was very wrong. I could never think of that boy as boring.

“School was becoming more and more frightening. In February of 1936 they banned all Jews from my school. Anna and I came home shell-shocked, she crying. There was no mother waiting to comfort her and so I did. Dean did the same for Sam.

“Our parents were unsure what to do with us. Legally we were too young for jobs, and in society we were now outcasts, so getting hired to do even odd jobs was going to be a hassle.

“In the end, Dean’s grandparents told the boys to stay in the house and stay out of trouble, my parents saying roughly the same thing. It was soon after that that we both realized there would be nobody in either of our houses.

“Dean’s home was often the choice place for us all to go. Sam and Anna would play in the living room while Dean and I went into his room. We were twelve and we were ‘cool’. One day we smoked one of his grandfather’s cigarettes. That was my first and not my last. I will tell you about my last cigarette later in the story.

“Samuel never caught us, thank god, and the kids never ratted us out after we came hacking and coughing from the bedroom. After that we would mostly entertain ourselves with books and games, usually making up something ridiculous.

“One of my fondest childhood memories is lying on Dean’s floor reading Robinson Crusoe while he sat on his bed drawing crude sketches. We used up the last of the coloured pencils months before and all he had to work with was shades of grey. I remember looking up from my book to see Dean with his hair in his face, a look of such concentration while his pencil scratched away. I think that was the first moment that I first thought of Dean in a way that was more than my friend. Of course it was a fleeting moment that would leave me angry with myself and more confused than ever. Twelve-year-old me pushed it to the back of my mind and when it resurfaced I would blame it on our isolation, that Dean was the only person around, my mind was compensating…

“I looked away as soon as these feelings took over. It was wrong, it was bad in every religion I could think of. And so when I glanced back to find him staring at me the same way I had been him, I looked away even faster. He did not.

“Dean was always far braver than I was- fighting Nazis in his mind, sketching anti-SS comics, speaking whatever comes to his mind.

“‘Since when can’t we look at each other?’ he asked me the next day.

“‘What?’ I asked, putting my book on my chest.

“‘Yesterday I looked at you and you acted like I had laser vision. Is it illegal to look at you now? Are you that important?’ Dean joked. I didn’t mean to blush, but I did. Dean seemed bewildered by it. ‘Are you sick again? Are you hiding something from me?’

“‘No!’ I told him. And it was no lie. There was nothing to hide. Just a feeling. A strange feeling in the put of my stomach that I didn’t like, that I wanted to go away. ‘Leave it, Dean,’ I said. He rolled his eyes and did so, though I could tell he wanted to know more of what I was thinking.

“I still get butterflies when I think of him, all these years later.

“Oh. I apologize. I think I got lost. You don’t want to hear about that.”

“No, no,” Lukas says. “This is a story about the two of you, of course you’re going to tell me about your feelings for him.” Castiel looks at Lukas with a wonder in his eyes.

“Yes. I suppose if I was to tell this story I was going to have to talk about my feelings eventually. I have never spoken about this with anyone. My family… I will tell you about them later. After the war, after… what happened to him, I tried to settle down. I tried to tell myself everything that happened was a result of the war, was a result of my trauma, that all of the feelings I had for Dean were because of our situation, was- was because we were hurt and alone. And so I settled down with a nice girl. Her name was Meg. We married. She got pregnant in 1947. She died giving birth in 1948. The child died with her.

“In a way I was almost relieved. I never had to pretend again. Anytime someone asked why I was not married, I could tell them about Meg and our child. I never named her. I couldn’t think of a worthy name. She was buried with Meg. I visit them when I can. But. I didn’t have to be around women, pretend I liked women. My wife and child were dead, and if someone suggested enough time had passed, I could give them a look and it was over.

“This was long after where we were. I apologize. Getting old…” Castiel waves his hand. “Have you ever read Kurt Vonnegut?”

“I have not,” Lukas tells him.

“There is a book of his, Slaughterhouse Five. It is about a man named Billy Pilgrim who travels across his own memory, infinitely living and infinitely dying. In a way it is how I feel old age is, and how storytelling now works in my mind. I am always jumping from one time to another, one day to the next and back again. One moment I am with Dean, another I am with Meg, and then I wake up here with you. It makes no sense, of course, but it is a feeling that I think is well described by Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five. I remember one friend of mine said that the novel was a funny book that he could not laugh at, and I feel that is the perfect description.

“I am once again off track from my story,” Castiel chuckles.

“When I was in class I had to write an essay about what makes me feel good in life. It started out as an essay about sports and exercise and how it made me feel good in my body and my mind, and by the end I was going on about photography. I realized I couldn’t hand it in and changed it to be about just sports. I didn’t like it, but it was what was required. Nothing is required in your story. Sway and change as you need to. In the end it will be told. I have nowhere to be and nothing I would rather be listening to,” Lukas finishes.

“You are wise beyond your years, Lukas Baumann.”

“So I have been told,” Lukas responds. Castiel smiles.

“Soon after my school banned its Jewish children, the fires began again. When the SS first took control there was a fire a block away from us. After we were kicked out of school Christian boys would chase us up and down the street. I saw them light fires in garbage cans waiting for trash day, small fires in yards. Eventually someone burned a house down. My neighbours took them in. Another neighbour found their cat decapitated. It only escalated.

“As it did, we received death threats. Notes left in the letterbox, at my parent’s workplace… it began to take its toll.”

Castiel lowers his head.

“It was all meaningless until it wasn’t. One night Gabriel didn’t come home from work. That was when we realized that this wasn’t a passing phase. That was when it truly started to get bad.”


	4. Gabriel

“It was a Wednesday night. Oft times Gabriel would come home so late for work that I wouldn’t see him until the next night. But the longest that I would not see him was two days. He always made sure to see his siblings every third morning, even if he had to wake us up. Anna and I saw our parents so little that Gabriel felt an obligation to be present in our lives. He would shake my shoulder, guide me to the table, and talk about his work while making me breakfast. Anna would soon join us, yawning and resting her head on the table while listening to Gabriel drone on.

“But that Wednesday night, he still wasn’t home, and he hadn’t woken me that morning. I asked Anna if he had woken her, and she confirmed that he had not. When my parents came home, exhausted, I expressed this concern them.

“They brushed it off, claiming that neither of them had seen Gabriel in a week and yet he was fine. I tried to argue it, but they went to bed, telling me not to worry. I followed them to their room, even when they grew angry standing my ground. Finally, out of frustration or tiredness, which I am not sure, they agreed that if Gabriel was not back by tomorrow morning my father would come with me to his work to ask about him. He had the following day off and while he was supposed to meet with a friend, he seemed to value the sleep he would get without me nagging him until the break of dawn.

“I did not well sleep that night. I lay awake in my bed, waiting for the familiar click of the lock on the front door and the creak of the hinges. Unsure of what the time was, I could no longer keep my eyes open, and I succumbed to my exhaustion.

“I woke to a hand gently shaking my shoulder.

“‘Gabriel?’ I blurted, sitting up quickly, hand moving to rub my eye. It was not him, but my father. He smiled nervously at me.

“‘There is still no sign of Gabriel, Castiel,’ I was informed. My father took a seat on the edge of my bed. ‘Today you and I will go to look for him while Anna stays here in case he comes back. Get dressed and we will leave.’

“I was ready to go within minutes. As we left the house I watched Dean come running down the sidewalk, a grin on his face when he saw me and his arm immediately raised in greeting.

“‘Mr. Novak, it’s so good to see you,’ he greeted my father, sticking his hand out. My father shook and gave Dean a grim smile.

“‘Dean, always a pleasure,’ my father responded. ‘Castiel and I are on our way out, perhaps you can stop by later to speak with him.’ Dean raised his eyebrow at me.

“‘We haven’t seen Gabriel for half a week,’ I confessed to my friend. My father gave me a stern look and I shrunk back.

“‘Dean, this is family business, and I would appreciate it if you would leave this to Castiel and myself,’ my father said to him. Dean nodded his head, turning from us and going back up the street to his own home. My father gave me another angered look before taking off down the sidewalk.

“Wait,” Lukas interjects. “Wouldn't your father want all the help that he could get in finding your brother?” he asks. Castiel shakes his head.

“It was a complicated matter. News travelled very fast through our neighbourhood and rumours could easily spread. Just the knowledge that Gabriel had not been seen could look suspicious to not only the non-Jewish Germans but to our own neighbours. A Jew disappearing at this time could be seen as him fleeing the country, which could get the rest of his family arrested for aiding him to do so. Or it could be seen by our neighbours as a Jew fleeing the community to rat out any secrets that we had to the SS, which happened once before and ended with a house being burned down across the city.

“It was a very dangerous time to be a Jew, and it was a very dangerous time to tell anyone outside of your family what was happening in your own life. I trusted Dean more than I could express to my father, but my father hardly knew the boy and had only exchanged a few words with his grandparents in all the years that Dean had lived down the block.

“And so my father and I left the safety of our community, keeping our heads low as we travelled through the city to Gabriel’s work at the lumber yard. My father found his supervisor and asked when he had last seen Gabriel. The man was furious, spewing curses left and right about how lazy Gabriel was, how he had missed all of this week’s shifts and that my father could tell him that he had lost his job.

“‘Sir, please,’ my father begged, ‘we cannot find him and are worried that something terrible may have happened. Please don’t fire him, we need the income when he returns from wherever he is.’

“‘Oh, I can tell you exactly where he is,’ the supervisor spat. ‘He’s with his gypsy whore. I’ve seen her lurking around this site, I’ve seen him going off with her after he leaves. That’s what he did the last time he was here, and I haven’t seen him since. So you can tell him that he is fired and that if I see him or his slut here again, I’ll be calling the SS!’

“My father and I hurried away from the site, my father with his arm around my shoulders. I was incredibly confused. Gabriel with a gypsy? How was that even possible? Where could he have even met this woman? Did they run off? Would he have run off without telling me? I could see in my father’s eyes that these same questions were running through his mind as well.

“‘Wait here,’ my father said to me, placing a hand on my shoulder before sliding it off and jogging back to the lumber yard. The supervisor yelled at my father, who made gestures of pleading. Eventually the supervisor said his final words, pointing in my direction. My father walked towards me briskly, grabbing me by the arm and leading me away from the site.

“‘What happened?’ I asked, looking back at the supervisor, who was watching as my father towed me down the road, arms crossed over his chest.

“‘Gabriel appears to have sneaked away with a gypsy by the name of Kali,’ my father practically snarled. ‘Abandoned his family for the last time. We will not speak of him to anyone ever again.’

“I was shocked beyond words. Gabriel had run off. I would never see my brother again, and I would never be able to comfortably speak of him in my home. In the back of my head, there was a wave of relief. Gabriel was free. He was free and he was happy. I could never express this to my father, of course, but it was something that I would never feel bad about. My brother would get to live the life he always wanted to live.

“I was at Dean’s the second I was free from my father’s anger. I told him everything, expressing my dream that Gabriel was in Switzerland with this gypsy girl, eating fish and drinking wine, laughing and happy for the rest of his days. Dean and I even began to speak of where we would go when we ran away. We knew we couldn’t live here forever and that one day leaving the country might be our only option. His desire was to go to Denmark, mine to flee to Canada, a place that I heard was untouched by Jewish prejudice.

“He responded that he didn’t care where we went, as long as he was with me.

“It made that feeling come back to my stomach. I immediately wanted to look away from Dean’s face as my cheeks burned bright red, but I didn’t. I kept looking into his curious green eyes, and I smiled, reciprocating the desire to be with him in my freedom.

“Two weeks later Gabriel’s body was found behind a dumpster in central Berlin, the mark of the SS carved into his cheek.

“He was dead.

“The gypsy girl Kali was never found.

“We could not afford much for a funeral, so he was buried in an old field near our house. My brothers returned from their new lives to mourn him with my sister, my parents, and myself. My brother was murdered for being a Jew,” Castiel spits, anger clouding his features. “He was killed because of a religion he barely recognized, and for what? What did they gain? They gained nothing. We lost so much. We lost so much when Gabriel died. And they gained nothing.”

Lukas stares at Castiel with wide eyes. The older man has clenched his fists and his jaw alike, teeth grinding, fury in his eyes. Lukas reaches out his hand and gently places it on Castiel’s. Castiel blinks, seeming to come out of his fit. He sighs, shoulders slumping.

“I apologize, Lukas Baumann. This is clearly no fault of yours. I had no reason to grow so angry,” Castiel mumbles. Lukas shakes his head.

“I am so very sorry for your loss,” he whispers. “I truly cannot find the words to express my anger and sorrow. No one deserves to be made to feel how you have felt, to see what you have seen.” Castiel raises his head, smiling softly at the younger man.

“Thank you,” he replies. “My family did not take his death well. My father isolated himself from the family, working constantly. He barely said a word to us for many years, arriving home for dinner, eating, and immediately retiring to his bedroom. My mother completely fell apart. She grew weak and feeble. She could not work. She spent her days at home. I cared for her and Anna alike, Dean often coming to be my company as I made her eat and read to her. She would not speak, would not look at us, would not interact. It felt as though Anna and I were orphans.

“Our brothers were no help. The funeral was the last time that I would ever see them. Michael and Balthazar both fled the country shortly after. Michael went to America, Balthazar to Britain. It has been almost eighty years since I have seen them. I am unsure if they are dead or alive.

“My father was now the sole earner for our family. My two older brothers would send back what they could from their own lives, and all of Gabriel’s funds went directly back into the family. With mother too ill to work and Anna and I too young to work, it left just my father. I searched tirelessly for any kind of job. I was almost thirteen, surely I could find something, surely I could help my family in whatever little way that I could. But no one would hire a Jewish boy. I could not lie to them and say that I was an Aryan like them, and I could not find any Jews who could afford to hire the extra help for the menial tasks that a boy my age could do.

“And so I went home feeling useless and stupid. I expressed this to Dean one night while the two of us were splayed across his bed, my head at the foot of the bed and his at the head. Our legs were intertwined in the middle.

“‘You are not useless and you are not stupid,’ Dean barked, immediately furious at the thought that I would ever think such a thing. He hopped up from his spot on the bed, leaning over me, arms on either side of my shoulders and chest against mine. His breath was warm and my heart beat fast. ‘You are one of the smartest boys I know. You will not say that you are stupid ever again, do you understand?’ I nodded meekly, blinking rapidly. Dean nodded, pushing himself off me. ‘Good. Now, would you like to hear my plan?’

“Dean delved into an idea that I wish I had thought of earlier. I obsessively kept my notes from school and I memorized nearly everything that the teachers told us. My dream was to one day be a librarian and know everything in the entire world.

“Dean suggested that for five-Reichsmark a week, kids could come to my house for an improvisation of school. It started off slowly, just Sam, Anna, and Dean coming to the house for menial lessons free of charge, but soon Jakob from next door and Greta from the next block over were there. Daniel, Isaac, Hans, Elsie- by the end of the month there were eight children being taught by myself. That Christmas, it felt like it was truly Christmas break. We went into the year of 1937 feeling refreshed and hopeful.

“1936 was a terrible year. Hitler invaded the Rhineland, many alliances were made, and I lost one of the most important people in my life. It was the year that showed me exactly how bad life could get. And yet, in the coming years, I would wish for nothing more than to return to that time. To feel that pain that, at the time, was so soul consuming, so heavy and thick. In the coming years I would find out what it truly meant to feel pain. Losing Gabriel was something that I wish I would never have to feel again, and yet I cannot tell you that in this story I will not describe a loss similar and losses worse than his.

“I went into the year 1937 cautiously optimistic. I had a home, I had my parents, I had my sister, and I had Dean. I had Dean. In so many ways, that was the only thing holding me together. That whenever I was overwhelmed, whenever the weight of exactly how wretched our situation was, I could look over at that grinning, goofy boy, and I could laugh along with whatever he was saying. He would reassure me that things were going to be okay. Nothing could break his spirit.

“The year of 1937 was largely uneventful. How can a whole year be uneventful, you might ask? There were events, yes, but events that can be mentioned in passing. My brothers both left the country shortly before my fourteenth birthday. My mother fell further in her decline, by 1938 refusing to leave the house altogether. Dean… I would see Dean, and I would get that feeling inside of me, that feeling that I ignored. It would become a much more common occurrence. An occurrence that we would both ignore. I am not sure if he realized what was going on in my mind when these looks were shared, and I am still not sure what happened in his mind.

“In 1937 I was beaten in the street, I had food thrown at me, I was nearly arrested four times. In 1937 I felt truly hungry for the first time when my father was laid off of work for a month and for the last week of that month I gave all of my rations to my sister and mother. In 1937 I did not crack. I would not crack. I was strong. I was the only man around the house. My father was rarely home and my mother needed to be cared for by someone.

“In 1937 I learned that things were not going to get better for a very long time.

“On my fifteenth birthday in 1938, there was no cake. We could not celebrate. I received a small taffy from Anna and a blank stare from my mother. My father patted me on the back before retiring to his room.

“Dean knocked on my door later in the afternoon, greeting me with a huge smile, the wind blustering around him and his scarf blowing wildly in the wind. I ushered him inside, quickly taking him to the bedroom that was now my own. I closed the door and turned to find him rummaging through the bag he had brought and set on my bed.

“‘What are you doing?’ I asked. He shrugged, not turning to face me. I rolled my eyes with a sigh and leaned my back against the door, waiting for him to reveal whatever he was going to be oh so proud to show me.

“When he turned, I was taken aback. In his hands was a sketched picture of Gabriel. It looked exactly like him. I had almost forgotten, in all that time, what my big brother looked like. His goofy smile, his shaggy hair, that gleeful glint in his eye. I immediately began to cry silently, the tears running down my face, no chance of my being able to stop them. A stuttering breath left my lips. This was it. This was when I finally allowed myself to break down.

“Dean set the drawing on my bed and moved across the room, wrapping me in his arms. I clung to him tightly, sobs breaking out of my chest. I couldn’t stop. I had held back the emotions for so long, but seeing my brother’s face, seeing him so clearly on the paper just mere feet away from me, was too much.

“‘I wanted to give you one for your birthday last year,’ Dean confessed, ‘or Christmas this year. But I just couldn’t get it right. I spent all of last month trying to get the perfect sketch out. I think this one looks pretty close, though. What do you think?’

“‘It’s beautiful, Dean. I will never be able to thank you for the gift you have given me,’ I whispered into his shoulder. Dean held me closer, resting his head on top of mine.

“We stood together in that embrace for a time that would be considered extensive to most. I could not move, and I think he feared that if he did I would fall to pieces. Perhaps he was right. I remember that moment so clearly, I remember the warmth of him and the smell of him, all these years later. He was so kind and so caring. He was everything that I wanted in the world.

“Everything in life was falling apart, but in that moment, in that embrace with that boy, I felt right. I felt like I could breathe once again, even if for a short moment. And for that, I am eternally grateful to Dean.”


	5. Gestapo

**May 23 rd, 1938**

_Castiel knocks on Dean’s front door, glancing behind himself at the deserted street. The house is empty today, his mother having left for the market that allows Jews to enter, taking his sister with her. Castiel’s mother said that it’s important for Anna to know what can be bought with the little money they have that will last the longest. Little does Castiel know that this is the last trip to the market that his mother will ever take, her grief of Gabriel overtaking her in the coming weeks. For the last few months she seemed to have been getting better, improving, but today would be the last day of the miraculous recovery._

_Castiel’s father is at work with Dean’s grandfather. Dean’s grandmother is at work, taking Sam with her._

_Both houses are empty._

_It’s just Dean and Castiel._

_Dean’s arm appears from the door, pulling Castiel inside before slamming it shut. Dean drags Castiel over to the couch, dropping to the ground, Castiel subsequently following._

_“What? What’s wrong?” Castiel asks and Dean clamps his hand over the other boy’s mouth._

_“Hush!” he breathes. “Grandfather just called from work. The SS are coming to the neighbourhood to look for Jews. He was tipped by a man at work. He and your father will be working late. We have to stay hidden with the door locked and the lights off.”_

_“My mother and sister are at the market- did your grandfather say when this will be happening? Will they be safe? I have to go back to the house in case they come home!” Castiel tries to rise, but Dean drags him down._

_“No!” Dean exclaims, quickly clamping his hand down on his own mouth. He takes a breath. “I have no idea when they’re coming, Cas. You have to stay here and be safe. Your mother and sister will be safe, the market is an hour’s walk from our houses. Please, don’t go. I. I can’t risk losing you.” Castiel blinks, sinking back down to his knees behind the couch. He shifts, crossing his legs, eyes watching as Dean’s face turns red and his eyes fly to the ground._

_“Okay,” Castiel says. “I should call father, try to get him to find them and warn them.” Castiel peers around the side of the couch, looking out the window. It seems clear._

_“No,” Dean says again. “No standing. No going to the phone. It’s not worth the risk! Do you want to be taken away like Jonas and Hannah?” Castiel pales. He can still remember the day that their mother came to Dean’s home, absolutely hysterical. She had been at work when the SS appeared and took the children and her husband. Two days later she was gone. Whether she was taken or escaped, no one knew._

_“Dean, I’m scared,” Castiel confesses._

_“So am I,” Dean replies. He scooches closer to Castiel. Castiel draws an arm around his friend, pulling him close. He ignores the pulsing, squirming feeling in his stomach. He forces himself to calm down, breathing in and out slowly. The house is quiet, just the sound of their breath as they inhale and exhale in unison._

_“Castiel?” Dean whispers._

_“Yes?”_

_“You need to be careful. You. I can’t. I can’t be here if you’re taken. You have to promise to be as careful as possible and not get caught by the SS or by those- those nightmare people!”_

_“Dean, I’m not going to get taken away,” Castiel says, taken aback by his friend’s outburst. His throat feels swollen. His heart is hammering._

_Dean is looking at him, eyes moving from Castiel’s eyes to his lips and back again. Castiel’s heart beats even fast._

_“Dean-”_

_Their lips touch for a split second._

_Castiel recoils instantly, half standing and stumbling from behind the couch. Dean shoots up. Both of them are in the open. They make eye contact and dive for Dean’s grandparent’s bedroom, closing the door before falling against it._

_They make eye contact once more before Dean lowers his gaze, face beet red._

_“I’m sorry,” Dean mumbles._

_“It’s okay,” Castiel mumbles back. Castiel has his knees drawn up to his chest. Dean has his legs stretched out and his arms crossed over his chest. They briefly look at each other once more before hurriedly looking away._

_“I- do you- have you- never mind,” Dean mutters, coughing into his shoulder._

_“I have,” Castiel sighs. “I do. Every day. But. I have never seen a man married to a man. We can’t do that. This. Whatever this almost was.” Dean is looking at him._

_“Who says that we can’t?” Dean asks._

_“Well, I assume if we ask my parents or your grandparents that they’ll say we can’t. Our siblings. Neighbours. The SS. Our chancellor,” Castiel says matter-of-factly._

_Dean kisses him again, pulling back faster than the last time. The feeling rises within Castiel to the point that he feels he’ll vomit all over his friend._

_“We can’t,” Castiel tells him, eyes pleading._

_Dean kisses him again. A second longer._

_And again._

_Castiel leans into it, placing his hand on Dean’s face as he had seen his father do to his mother many years ago. What seemed like a lifetime ago._

_They breath apart, breathless, eyes bright._

_“Do you still care what the whole world will think?” Dean asks._

_“I’m not so sure,” Castiel whispers._

…………….

**July 14 th, 2015**

Castiel opens his eyes.

“Sir?” Lukas asks. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Castiel replies, smiling at the younger man. “I was caught in a memory. A memory that starts good. The memory is from the spring of 1938. It is the memory of my first kiss with Dean. My first kiss at all. Forbidden as it was, and frightened as I was by embracing that feeling I had been so horrified of, I loved it.

“The moment, however, did not last. Moments after our lips parted, there was a banging on the door. The gestapo were out in predominantly Jewish neighbourhoods trying to find families to force into concentration camps. No one knew what happened there, but we all knew that once you left, you never returned. The houses would remain empty, the hearths unlit, the tables topped with dust. I would not become one of them. I would not let Dean become one of them.

“We spent the next two minutes holding our breath and each other, cowering under Dean’s grandparent’s bed as we waited, unsure of whether the door would bust open and we would be whisked away to a place unknown, or if we would remain safe for one more day.

“They left. We were safe, at least for the moment.

“That night, when we finally deemed it safe for me to leave Dean’s house, I returned to my home to find the door wide open, kicked in by the SS. The house was ransacked, the small amount of food we had left gone. Mud covered the floor, lamps were broken, the furniture over turned. There were a handful of other houses like that on the street, books and papers strewn across yards, shoes in the streets. If I had stayed at my home rather than Dean’s, I do not know where I would be now, what would have happened to me.” Castiel pauses, taking a breath. Lukas places a hand on his arm, and Castiel smiles at him.

“I can’t imagine thinking about all of that,” Lukas says. “I have a hard enough time thinking about how my own path would have been changed by small life decisions, but to _know_ how severely it could have changed based on one small decision… I couldn’t live that life. You are a very strong man.”

“Thank you,” Castiel chuckles. “It all comes with age. Which sounds ridiculous. I heard the same when I was your age and thought that, pardon my language, it was a load of shit. Such an American saying. _Load of shit_. But also very encapsulating of the feeling.”

Lukas can’t help but laugh at this. “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard someone be thoughtful on the term ‘load of shit’,” he says.

“I assure you, I can be thoughtful about the most unusual things,” Castiel laughs. He sighs, face falling. “My mother returned home with my sister shortly after I did. She walked into the kitchen, put the groceries from the market on the counter, sat down on the couch, and never said another word to us. She would move silently from the couch to the bathroom, the bathroom to bed. She would shift when you asked, she would eat when you placed food in front of her. But that was all. She was hollow. Anna and I cooked and cleaned as we had in the past. Mother seemed to be getting better for a time, but the invasion of our home cracked something deep inside of her.

“That was the true beginning of the end for my family. Gabriel was the first fissure, but the invasion was when our family permanently separated. Anna stopped talking to me and I stopped trying to speak with her. No one shared their feelings, all of us living in our own private fears.

“1938 was a bad year not only for Germany but for my family. For myself. That spring was just the beginning of our troubles.”


End file.
